“An organization shall establish and have access to compliance obligations relating to its environmental aspects; determine how these compliance obligations apply to the organization; take these compliance obligations into account when establishing, implementing, maintaining and continuously improving the environmental management system. In summary, to assess whether you have an effective ISO 14001:2015 legal registry, ask yourself five questions – is my legal registry: The regulatory system in each country is constantly evolving, so building an HSE legal registry is certainly not a task that needs to be done once and forgotten, but requires regular review and updating. This means regularly checking new laws and regulations and updating the registry if necessary. Do you communicate how compliance obligations are met (7.4.1)? It is clear that compliance with the requirements of these two clauses 6.1.3 requires a process that begins with the need to identify and have access to applicable regulations based on the environmental or health and safety aspects/hazards of the company (what the company does). This document describes the procedure for identifying legal occupational health and safety requirements, maintaining a site-level record, and regularly assessing and collecting non-compliance. RegScan`s team of EHS experts researches and maintains legal records to keep you up-to-date with laws and regulations around the world. RegScan currently maintains over 250 jurisdictions and related regions in this format and can expand other countries/regions as needed. Section 6.1.3 of ISO 14001 (2015) on environmental management systems states that organizations must identify and have access to the legal (and other) requirements with which they must comply, and understand how these “compliance obligations” apply to the organization. It is important that there is also a requirement to keep documented information about them. In these change emails, you will find a comment from us on Notisum that briefly describes the heart of the change so you can decide if and how you are affected. This way, you won`t miss a major change and won`t have to read complicated and difficult legal documents every time there is a new change.
The trick to determining your company`s compliance obligations (6.1.3) is to start with what you don`t know. A legal registry that is just a braindump of what you already know is probably somewhat lacking. A more effective approach is to examine the relevant rules at a high level and conduct an applicability analysis. The legal register should not be isolated – it is not an isolated document. Review the registry and look for ways to ensure it is linked to other key elements of the standard: stakeholders, environmental aspects, objectives, operational controls, training and communication, to name a few. Environmental aspects and compliance obligations (legal register) are fundamental elements of the EMS and your attention and verification of both are essential to the success of an EMS. Thank you for your comments. I fully agree with your approach. Developing your own registry is tedious and time-consuming, but I think it`s worth it as a meaningful learning experience. A third-party review is then a very good idea as an exam. In next week`s blog post, I address the issue of compliance with legal requirements, which is the natural consequence of the registry development process. Feel free to contact me at rshaw@redlogenv.com and we can continue to chat offline.
Greetings. The first step is to develop a generic template and format for the HSE Legal Registry. There are really no restrictions on how this can be done. But my experience is that the simpler, the better. I prefer to use an Excel spreadsheet for the registry, but they can also be written in MS Word, in a database like MS Access, or even on flashcards if you`re old school! Notisum commented on EU law, all national laws and regulations in the field of health and safety. If a document in your legal registry is changed, either because a change has occurred or because a replacement document is published, the system sends an email to the parties of your choice. Do you want to have your compliance management system certified? The new ISO 37301 standard replaces ISO 19600 and allows certification! Learn how to implement the standard, conduct audits effectively and. What`s interesting is that the term “legal registry” is not mentioned anywhere in the standards – it has just become the overarching standard term for what these provisions require. We`ll be back! The provisions of clauses 6.1.3 of both standards are perfectly logical – and would indeed attempt to describe what might have become the “conventional” understanding of a legal register. The registry alone is meaningless; rather, it is a tool that helps you and your business solve a business problem, which is compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. Nothing more. Nothing less.
What`s more important is what you do with it. Read my previous blog post on compliance audits for more information on this critical topic – How to conduct your own HSE compliance audit. How would you define a “legal registry”? Where does the sentence come from? Equally surprising to me is that the vast majority of companies that have some sort of HSE legal register have one that is incomplete and/or obsolete. At Notisum, we help you prepare your account and health and safety register according to your needs. By telling us how you work today, who is responsible and what your wishes are, we can help you structure your account and legal records according to your business. Maybe the production manager needs updates on all the laws and requirements, while the HR manager only needs to see the laws, regulations, and requirements that affect internal operations. This allows you to grant different levels of access to the system to different people, making legal monitoring much easier and more transparent. The best practice we`ve seen from our clients is taking a holistic approach that enables ongoing compliance management. This includes creating living “compliance registries” for each of your sites around the world, with the dual goal of educating companies about the laws that apply to them, as well as creating the ability to continuously assess, record, and verify your compliance status, not just when an audit is scheduled. It is very useful for a company that the legal register not only contains a list of legal titles, but also summarizes each entry in terms of the compliance obligations that the legislation imposes on organizations. This then leads to a better understanding of compliance and the activities to be performed and the processes to be put in place to ensure compliance within the organization. Thank you for sharing the valuable solution and the importance of the legal registry, currently I`ve been going through it since last week, it`s just crazy.
With your suggestions, I have put together a good register. There are many so-called “legal registry” service providers in every country in the world where certification of a management system has been sought. However, if different, local and national solutions are used in a multinational organization, they are likely to be very different in terms of coverage, quality, reliability and, ultimately, effectiveness. “The organization shall establish, implement, maintain and have access to a process for identifying and accessing current legal and other requirements that apply to its hazards, occupational health and safety risks and occupational health and safety management system, determine how these legal and other requirements apply to the organization, and what must be communicated, these legal requirements and other requirements at the time of establishment consider the implementation, maintenance and continuous improvement of the occupational health and safety management system. If you would like more information about the HSE Legal Register and how it applies to your institution, please contact us. We are constantly updating our records for our clients with the aim of making them as simple, efficient and cost-effective as possible. An organization must maintain documented information about its compliance obligations. I am currently working on our company`s legal register and I found this information very convenient.
